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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC 125 on New Year's Day has a new co-headliner, as Ariel Helwani reports at Versus.com that they are targeting a bout between Jose Aldo and Josh Grispi for the first UFC Featherweight Championship fight in the organization's history.
In addition, Helwani reports that Roy Nelson has been pulled from the card entirely with Shane Carwin's back injury pulling him from their fight. That was the night's originally scheduled headliner.
The report states that fight contracts have been distributed to both Grispi and Aldo, but the fight has not yet been finalized.
Grispi is being pulled from a planned fight with Erik Koch at WEC 52 on November 11 for this title shot. The 22 year old has won ten straight fights dating back to 2006, and with the exception of a decision win in 2007, all of Grispi's fights have ended in the first round. He appeared in the WEC four times, submitting Mark Hominick and Jens Pulver, choking L.C. Davis unconscious and knocking out Micah Miller.
Aldo has won eleven straight fights himself dating just slightly further back than Grispi's streak. He defended his WEC Featherweight Championship for the second time last month, knocking out Manvel Gamburyan in the second round. After eight fights in the WEC, he'll enter the UFC with the merger on January 1 as the very first UFC Featherweight Champion. If he can defeat a very tough challenger in Grispi, he'll leave UFC 125 the same.
Penick's Analysis: I'm a really big Grispi fan, so this is definitely welcome news. His fight with Koch, while it was a good matchup and would have been a good fight, is obviously nowhere near this one, and this fight pits two of the more exciting young fighters the sport has seen on the big stage in a long time. Grispi has been extremely impressive, as has Aldo, obviously, and this is going to be one hell of an exciting fight for the UFC to debut the featherweight division with. As for Nelson, it's unfortunate that he's been pulled from the card, as I would have liked to see the UFC match him up with Mir, but for now he gets more time to heal up from some lingering injuries of his own and they'll get him into another fight down the line.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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